Published via Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

Merchant Ivory Productions is a company known for some of the highly regarded period dramas and adaptations of great works of literature and its status in last decades of 20th Century was in many ways similar to the status of BBC in the world of television. This reputation was cemented mostly due to great commercial and critical success of 1985 film A Room with a View.

The film is based on the eponymous novel by English writer E. M. Forster. The plot begins in 1907 Florence where the protagonist Lucy Honeychurch (played by Helena Bonham Carter), young upper class Englishwoman, came to spend holiday chaperoned by her old spinster cousin Charlotte Bartlett (played by Maggie Smith). There they meet number of English tourists, among them freethinking Mr. Emerson (played by Denholm Elliott) and his good-looking son George (played by Julian Sands). Lucy meets George at number of occasions and during one of them George spontaneously kisses her. Fearing scandal, Lucy decides to return to England where she gets engaged to Cecil Wyse (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), wealthy but snobbish and shallow man. Her plans for marriage are disrupted when it turns out that Emersons have rented cottage near her estate and became her neighbours. Her brother Freddy (played by Rupert Graves) befriends George and Lucy’s frequent encounters with him make her contemplate breaking off engagement and admitting that she actually feels love for the man who kissed her in Italy.

Producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala have been making films together for years. By the time of A Room with a View, their rich experiences turned them into formidable film making team and even those who don’t appreciate period dramas would appreciate great skill displayed in this film. Despite relatively low budget and difficulties in obtaining permission to shoot at Florentine locations, A Room with a View effectively reconstructs early 20th Century with clever use of props and costumes. Great care about little details can be seen in almost every shot and sometimes it hurts the film, making some of the scenes slightly overlong, at least for the audiences that don’t have an acquired taste for this kind of films. Composer Richard Robbins, also known as long time associate of Merchant and Ivory, adds an effective score, although the audience would rather remember “O mio babbino caro”, aria from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi sung by Kiri Te Kanawa, which is used in the film and whose popularity in subsequent years can be, at least partially, attributed to success of A Room with a View.

Another great asset of this film is the cast, made out of many experienced and formidable British actors. Young Helena Bonham Carter, at the very start of her career, benefits a lot from constraining Edwardian costumes that emphasise her angelic-looking face and allow her to express her character’s conflict between “sensible” following of class conventions and following her heart very effective manner. Julian Sands is also good, but not as effective as Daniel Day-Lewis in one of his rare supporting roles or Simon Callow who plays semi-comical role of vicar. Although most of the characters in the film are female and although the film, like the novel, mostly deals with societal and sexual repression of women in Edwardian England, some of the critics have found A Room with a View to be the film indirectly showing that some of the victims can be men, forced to substitute their repressed sexuality with random acts of irrational rebellion. This is mostly due to the scene in which Freddy and George decide enjoy some skinny dipping in the lake, where they are joined by enthusiastic vicar. The scene is interrupted with the accidental arrival of fully clothed Lucy, which adds delightful but subtle comic dimension to the film. A Room with a View won Oscar for the Best Adapted Screenplay and had rather impressive box office results for a costume drama. Although this kind of films is an acquired taste, it nevertheless can be recommended to broader audience and can explain why Merchant Ivory became institution among certain set of cinephiles.

RATING: 7/10 (++)